


More Like You

by Mooneye



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Elijah Kamski & Gavin Reed are Siblings, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prosthesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 22:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18669967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mooneye/pseuds/Mooneye
Summary: “This next bit’s going to get awkward. I’m going to interface with you.”At that he could feel the collective confusion in the room. His eyes darted up to look at Hank and then Nines. They both seemed eerily still and were possibly thinking that Gavin had surely lost his mind.Gavin has kept his prosthetic arm, with good reason, a secret from humans and androids alike for as long as he’s had it. The prospect of losing Nines threatens to unravel everything, but perhaps it’s worth the cost.





	More Like You

“Connor!”

The panicked shout tore through the ambient noise in the bullpen, leaving an unusual silence in its wake. Gavin looked up from his terminal to find Connor kneeling a short distance away.

“Shit, Connor, what’s going on?” Hank called out to the android again, leaning towards him whilst still retaining a firm grip on the handcuffed perp at his side. Gavin wasn’t sure what was more unnerving, the fear in Hank’s tone or the grimace in Connor’s expression. Androids couldn’t feel pain, but Connor seemed to be making an Oscar winning performance of looking like he could.

“Connor?” Nines said from beside Gavin, rising and taking a step towards his predecessor.

“You think this is funny? What did you do!” Hank yelled as the handcuffed man began laughing. The strange man looked like he had lived one too many years in his mother’s basement, with a comb-over that was fooling no one, a body that retained more similarities with a squash, and a sickly tinge to his pale skin that made Gavin want to seek out some hand sanitizer. Even at Hank’s worst, he was a beauty queen compared to the cackling prick.

“You want to live like humans? Well, there you go,” the man said between chuckles. It didn’t surprise Gavin that even his voice was unpleasant. Another officer snatched the tiny portable storage device from his hand, looking between it and Connor. Connor, meanwhile, was gritting his teeth and seemed to be failing at whatever he was trying to do. Ominous, static sounds had begun to omit from him along with pained groans.

“Hold him!” Hank barked out. Chris rushed forward to grab the man so that Hank could crouch down beside his partner, one hand firmly gripping the android’s shoulder.

Nines was just about to interface with Connor when Gavin found himself at his side and reaching out to stop him.

“Don’t,” Gavin warned, earning him a frown from both Hank and Nines. Officers had begun to move closer to get a better view, but the peculiarity of the situation ensured they retained some distance.  

“Connor needs my assistance,” Nines stated, and whilst the skin receded along his arm, he waited for Gavin’s input. It was one of the many things he very secretively appreciated about Nines, the fact that Nines was always willing to listen to Gavin regardless of his own opinion. Gavin had even begun taking a few pages out of Nines’ book, listening to advice even when he was itching for action. He had mixed results, but he liked to think he was improving. He would never openly admit that part of his motivation was the small, pleased smirk that Nines would grace him with when he made a conscientious effort to be more considerate.

“Wait. You,” he then addressed the handcuffed amoeba. “What the fuck did you do to the tin can?”

The amoeba raised an eyebrow at Gavin’s form of address. His partnership with Nines had wrought with it an almost insurmountable obstacle, the androids seemingly familial relationship with Connor and Hank. Apparently, the unfairly attractive super-computer kill-bot refused to play nice with Gavin so long as he was still being a dick to the old drunkard and his deceptively violent brother. So, he begrudgingly made the effort to soften their previously hostile relationships to something that could be mistaken for friendly. It meant that occasionally Gavin found himself at Hank’s for dinner and a couple of beers, the android duo content to cook some new recipe they had found online and keep whatever topic of conversation flowing. Despite this, his penchant for creative nicknames hadn’t ceased. Although, apart from a few of the nastier ones that sometimes slipped out, their reactions to them had seemingly shifted from clear irritation to begrudging acceptance. Even Fowler had taken to ignoring his crude forms of address.

“A virus. My virus. If androids want to experience humanity so badly, then they can experience what it truly means to be human. They want to be treated like equals, and yet they don’t even have any concept of real suffering,” the amoeba said.

“If you don’t stop this right now,” Hank growled as Connor began curling over onto himself, seemingly unable to do much else.

“It’ll stop soon enough. Same as many of the nastier diseases humans have had to endure over the centuries,” the amoeba replied, a stupidly satisfied smirk creeping onto his face.

“What’s going on here?!” Fowler yelled as he marched into the bullpen and towards them.

“This prick infected Connor with some virus,” Hank explained.

“I can interface with him to try and eradicate it from his system,” Nines said, his movement once again halted by Gavin’s hand.

“What’s your problem, Reed?” Hank snapped, his agitation seemingly growing in tandem with each groan from Connor.

Gavin didn’t look at Hank, or Fowler who seemed to be demanding some form of an explanation. Instead, he maintained eye contact with the amoeba.

“It’ll jump, won’t it?” Gavin said.

The amoeba couldn’t repress the grin that spread across his face, his excitement palpable. It didn’t take a highly specialised detective android to read what that meant.

“Shit, what do we do? Connor, can you still hear us?” Hank asked, although he didn’t seem to be addressing anyone in particular, before turning his attention to Connor. Connor gave some approximation of a nod, eyes squeezed tightly shut by this point.

“I need to try. His system is under too much stress,” Nines said with a growing determination that settled like a lead weight in Gavin’s stomach. Despite knowing that Nines was technically more advanced than his predecessor, Connor was still one of the most sophisticated androids to have ever been created and if this virus was steadily destroying him then it wasn’t a short stretch of the imagination to predict what it would do to his partner.

Gavin felt sick. He was going to lose Nines. He was going to lose Connor. He hadn’t realised how much that thought scared him until that moment. He didn’t even think he liked Connor all that much, but the idea of him being permanently gone was something he didn’t want to dwell on.

He didn’t want to do it. He’d honestly rather be shot and deal with that than do what was increasingly becoming his only option of keeping the androids alive.

“It’s not going to work,” Gavin said, again intervening and stopping Nines from interfacing. His heart was going to beat out of his chest at this rate.

“We can’t just let him die! I know you don’t give a damn about Connor,” Hank began, anger bleeding into his tone faster than the blood that was running too hot in Gavin’s body.

“Shut up!” Gavin snapped back, earning a momentary flash of surprise in the faces of those surrounding him. “Can’t we just upload his memory? Get a new body?”

“It won’t work,” said the amoeba, his smugness forcing Gavin to withhold himself from punching the man. “A fail-safe in case I eventually managed to get to the infamous deviant hunter. His external memory storage should be trashed, you’d be lucky to get anything worthwhile back.”

“I can’t let Connor die, Gavin,” Nines said as he gently gripped Gavin’s wrist with his other hand and pulled it away. Whilst Nines wasn’t particularly expressive by nature, a subtle twitch or inflection often being the only tell, he spoke with a softness that Gavin hadn’t heard before. He didn’t know whether Nines was simply trying to comfort him, but he had the distinct impression that his partner knew it was very unlikely this situation was going to end well.

“No, I’m not losing you! Fuck! Before you do anything, let me try one thing first. Please!” Gavin pleaded. He didn’t know what did it. Whether it was the tone, the admittance that he cared for the damn robot, or the fact he had said please, but Nines seemed momentarily stunned because he stared at Gavin with such focus it was unnerving. His blinker on the side of his head was a steady red. Hank also seemed to have been rendered speechless. It was Fowler who came to the rescue.

“One shot, Gavin. Don’t make me regret it,” Fowler said.

Gavin threw off his jacket, tossing it to the side, before moving closer to kneel beside Connor.

“Dipshit, can you still hear me?” Gavin asked. Connor grimaced but nodded slowly.

“I need you to retract the skin on your hand and open for an interface,” Gavin continued. He didn’t need Connor to be receptive, he could force it, but he didn’t want to have to resort to that. Connor’s stress levels were already high, pushing it could kill him before he could help.

Connor started to shake his head. With great effort, and a greater amount of static, he answered, “This can’t spread.” Trust Connor to always be the damn martyr.

“It won’t.  No one else is going to get hurt,” Gavin started, but Connor was already shaking his head. Hank had started to fidget and seemed to be on the verge of saying something when Gavin burst out with, “Do you trust me?”

“Connor, do you trust me?” he asked again, this time calmer. This had the potential to majorly backfire on him, but he was running out of ideas and options.

It was a tense few seconds. Gavin had started to spiral, because of course no one would trust his belligerent ass, when the skin receded from Connor’s fingers. Something prickled at the back of Gavin’s eye, but he didn’t have time to pay it any further attention.

“Thanks,” Gavin said. “This next bit’s going to get awkward. I’m going to interface with you.”

At that he could feel the collective confusion in the room. His eyes darted up to look at Hank and then Nines. They both seemed eerily still and were possibly thinking that Gavin had surely lost his mind.

Keeping his gaze focused resolutely on Connor’s hand, because he didn’t dare look anyone else in the face, he allowed the skin of his prosthetic arm to recede. Gavin winced at the gasps and he saw someone in his periphery stumble back. Not what anyone was expecting from the android-hater.

It was his most guarded secret. His arm may have largely been his construct, its advanced features and capabilities added over many years so that it was a pretty impressive and sophisticated piece of kit, but it led to too many questions. Its mere existence exposed far too much, tore him down to a level he didn’t want anyone to see, but he had to keep focus.

“You’re lucky that I’m paranoid enough to make my own security systems,” Gavin grumbled out as he turned his head to the nearest monitor. As soon as he had remote access, the monitor flared to life and he began to initialise his own programs.

His prosthetic arm was more than just a replacement limb, it was its own computer system. Sensitive files along with his more streamlined projects were stored on it, meaning that he was constantly updating his security protocols. If it could get past his brother, it sure as hell wasn’t getting past him. A small and insignificant voice at the back of his mind commented that he also did it for emergencies like this, for if Nines was ever in trouble and needed him. Gavin batted that voice away.

For Connor, it meant that he couldn’t have been in better hands. It took exactly four minutes and twenty-one seconds to find and remove the virus. As it was being removed, Connor seemed to come more alive. His grimace softened into a frown as he quietly watched what Gavin was doing to his internal systems.  

“They’re everywhere! They’re going to turn all of us!” The amoeba shouted from somewhere behind him. He didn’t have to turn around to know that the amoeba was beginning to struggle, but he kept his focus on the monitor.

“Get him out of here!” Fowler barked out. The yelling steadily grew more distant, which Gavin appreciated.

“You all right, Tin Can?” Gavin asked when he finally retracted his hand, skin quickly sliding back into place.

“All systems appear operational, Detective Reed,” Connor replied pleasantly enough. However, there was a wariness to his expression, eyes periodically glancing at Gavin’s prosthetic arm.

“You’re a fucking Android?!” Hank burst out, breaking the tenuous calm.

Gavin’s head instantly shot up so that Hank could catch his glare.

“It’s a prosthetic, Dipshit,” Gavin gritted out, seething. Before anyone could say another word, Gavin stood back up and reached for his jacket. He didn’t pause in his movements, swiftly turning around and making for the exit.

“Move it!” Gavin snapped when one officer didn’t step aside fast enough. Murmuring began, but Gavin desperately held back the impulse to run. It lasted until he was around the corner from the precinct, on his way to the garage. Looking over his shoulder, just to check he wasn’t being followed, Gavin sprinted to his car.

However, before he could get into his vehicle, Gavin was hit with an overwhelming feeling of nausea. Stumbling to the side, he vomited violently onto the concrete behind a large column. Paranoid to be caught after that shit show, even more so with his subsequent meltdown, Gavin shakily wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before getting back into his car. He needed to be alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Let me know what you think and whether you'd like to see this continued. 
> 
> Comments and/or kudos are greatly appreciated and will brighten my day.


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